


Still Friends

by completelyhopeless



Series: Two Circus Birds [16]
Category: DCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Comment Fic, Community: comment_fic, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:59:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3112154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick puts on a brave face after his kidnapping and Clint's departure. Barbara and Bruce can see through it, but they can't fix it. And eventually, Dick turns to the only person who can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [storiesfortravellers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/gifts).



> I was formulating this part and decided it would work for this prompt: _[Any, any, Friends til the End](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/545540.html?thread=77315588#t77315588)_
> 
> I wanted to do something in the circus birds AU for that anyway because the boys are friends to the end. And because they will be, but I don't write death fics, so I couldn't fill anything like that.
> 
> And because this is the start of how Dick ends up leaving and becoming Nightwing instead of Robin.

* * *

Dick was smiles and laughter and acrobatics.

He seemed happy. Adjusted. Unfazed by being kidnapped and abused and Clint leaving.

Barbara knew it was an act, though. She knew that Dick could make himself do acrobatics when he was hurt and bleeding, and she knew he could fake a smile better than anyone. As Robin, he traded insults and danced around bad guys like he never missed a step, had never been injured by the job or what he'd lost.

Dick's smiles were easier to take in his mask, though, because she didn't have to see that they weren't real in his eyes, could avoid the pain that would have shown through if not for it, and she figured that was the reason he spent most of his time working with Batman and other superheroes and almost pretending that Dick Grayson didn't exist.

She knew it didn't help that they weren't in the same school anymore. She'd always been older than him, and while he'd been in a few of her classes, he was still grades below her. She'd graduated and moved on. Dick was still at the school he'd always hated, and anyone would prefer being Robin over that, even when being Robin came with bruises and bandages and kidnappings and PTSD.

* * *

“You can stop staring at me, Babs. I'm not going to disappear or melt or something,” Dick said, stretched out on the couch. She was hovering again, and he didn't want to yell at her, but he was sick of the hovering. Alfred hovered, always “cleaning something” near where Dick was when he was home, and Bruce loomed, doing more of the bonding kind of things he never had time for before as well as extra training and missions with other heroes and sidekicks as Batman. They kept watch, and they kept him busy. He knew that was what they were doing, what they had been doing ever since Clint left and Swordsman never showed up to his trial.

They never found a body, but the assumption was made, and Dick figured if Clint was asked, he wouldn't deny it. Dealing with Swordsman was why he'd left—because he needed the nightmare to end, and in some ways, he was right. Dick had been there once, ready to kill Swordsman himself, but he hadn't wanted his friend to do it.

“I'm sorry, Dick,” Barbara said. “It's not that I mean to stare, but when you start to zone out, I start to worry about you.”

Dick nodded. “I know. I just... Two-Face didn't kill me, okay? I survived, and I'm fine, and I'm sick of everyone acting like I'm going to break. It's been _months._ Almost a _year—”_

“It's been _over_ a year,” she corrected quietly. “I can't forget that day. Not the one when you went missing, not the one when I found you, not the ones in between. Trust me, I know how long it's been.”

“He's never come close to that again,” Dick reminded her, thinking that Bruce should be the one she was worried about, not Dick. Bruce was the one that got dangerous when his life got disrupted. Dick was a little down, and he didn't want to talk about how many nightmares he still had, but he was fine. He was coping. He had more friends now, even, and everyone else would say he was doing fine.

“Not as long as you're with him,” she agreed. She let out a breath, running her fingers through her hair. “That sounds wrong, and I don't want to put pressure on—”

“Babs,” Dick interrupted, not wanting to let her go on or take any kind of blame for this. “I already know he's got a lot invested in me being Robin. I've known for a long time now. It's not hard to figure out. He took me in after I'd almost gotten myself killed going after Swordsman, telling me who he was—that he was Batman. I was the first person besides Alfred and Lucius to know. It... That was kind of huge, and he didn't want anyone else in on the secret. He still doesn't. Clint knew because he knew me and once you know I'm Robin, you know Batman is Bruce.”

She nodded. “Though I knew Clint was the mysterious archer before I knew you were Robin or that Bruce was Batman. I tried to tell myself you weren't for a long time, but I knew.”

“The thing is, Bruce will never get over his parents' murder. He's obsessed with it. That turned him from everything he might have been into Batman. He saw a similar need in me after my parents died, but the difference between us has always been that I knew exactly who killed my parents and could have the vengeance he could never have. I could have had it any time over the past seven years.”

“No. You couldn't find Swordsman. Bruce couldn't.”

“We could have, if we'd really been looking. But Clint was right. Bruce didn't want to look.”

“You can't mean that. Bruce knew how much that man had hurt both of you, how much he took from you, how messed up you were—”

“He was afraid. Afraid that I'd get my vengeance and leave, that I'd want to stop being Robin if Swordsman was caught. So he pushed Zucco and Swordsman to the back burner, always let something else be more important because he scares himself when I'm not there or when I'm hurt, and he needed me to stay. It's messed up but it's so Bruce.”

She gave a strangled laugh. “Yeah, it is.”

“I proved him wrong, though. I didn't leave when Clint did, and even though Swordsman's gone, I'm still here.”

“You are,” she agreed. “But do you _want_ to be?”

Dick swallowed, glad Bruce was off with the Justice League, because he couldn't answer that.

* * *

“It's wrong on so many levels to have to pretend I want to order a hit to hear your voice.”

Clint stilled. He only kept a phone for one job at a time, and it wasn't easy for anyone to know the number. He might never have been the sidekick or the favored son, but he'd learned plenty from Batman—most importantly how to avoid him. Hearing _that_ voice was not supposed to happen. Ever. He'd accepted that when he left. He'd burned bridges he couldn't get back.

“Dick.”

“I missed you. There, I got that out of the way. Babs would be proud of me.”

Clint shook his head. “You have got to be crazy. You can't—”

“I got Lucius to make me a phone Bruce couldn't hack and couldn't track. I can say whatever I want and talk to whoever I want,” Dick said. “And don't tell me he didn't because he wouldn't go against Bruce and because he has to disapprove of what you did with the bow he made you because it's crap. He makes toys and tricks for Batman. He knows what his stuff is used for, and he accepts it. He says he's got a better set of hearing aids for you and more trick arrows, too.”

“That is not funny.”

“Oh, suck it up and deal, Clint. Lucius liked you and it had nothing to do with me. He even told Bruce off when Bruce got angry about the bow,” Dick went on. “Basically, I think he thinks that if Bruce had been more of a father to you, you'd never have left and turned against his principles.”

Clint shrugged. “Or you could see it as a natural extension _of_ those principles. He taught us both to be vigilantes, doing our own form of justice. Sometimes justice means they have to stay down for a change. Those ones... I won't say I'm sorry. I'm not.”

“You're an idiot. You think I'd call you up because I want you to say you're sorry? The stupidest thing is that it—I didn't call you because I couldn't. I didn't have a way to do it because you were hard to find and because I wasn't about to bring Bruce or anyone else down on you.”

“I suppose that's a point in the favor of old friends.”

Dick snorted. “Look, I got invited to the sidekick party. I made other friends. I still talk to Babs just about every day even though she's in college now. I have friends. Lots of them.”

“That's great.”

“But I still miss you, you dumbass.”

“Yeah, well, you're still a dick.”

They both laughed, and Clint swore there wasn't more than a year between the last time that they had and a few deaths as well. The whole thing just fell away like it wasn't even there, same as it somehow did with Barney, though he tried not to tell his officer of the law brother anything about himself these days.

“I can't say that I will ever agree with what you do,” Dick said after they'd stopped laughing. “I don't know that I can take that same natural extension. It's not... I can understand it. I can't do it, but I can understand it. We didn't agree on everything before, and this isn't any different. If there's one thing this past year or so has taught me, though, it's that no one can replace you or take your place. You're my brother, Clint. I love you like one, even if it was never official. There are others who I might say the same thing about, but they're not you. You are still my friend.”

“You're still an idiot,” Clint told him, trying not to care about what Dick just said. He was tired of being alone. He did it because he had to, and he was good at it, but he didn't like it. “Don't—”

“You were there when it was good, before it all went to hell,” Dick said. “That night ruined both of us, and it wasn't until later that we managed to help each other put ourselves back together again. You know what it was like in a way no one else does. We've been through too much together. I know other people might think I should hate you or give up on you, but not me. I will never do that. I know you. I know you're a good person.”

“I'm not. You're the hero, Dick, not me. I never was.” Clint shook his head, shoving that memory of promising to grow up to take care of the monsters far from his head. “I just kill people.”

“No, that's not all you do, and I won't ever believe that it is.”

“That just makes you stupid.” Clint sighed. Dick always had too big a heart for his own good. He thought the best of most people and he could hold onto a moral code Clint had abandoned.

“Maybe,” Dick agreed. The other end of the line was silent, and Clint almost hung up, but then Dick spoke again. “I... I'm somewhere outside Gotham right now. I had to ditch the bike because there was a tracker on it. I need you to come get me.”

Clint could have asked why, could have said no, could have done a hundred other things, but he knew there was a reason Dick had called him instead of one of his other “friends.” This could be a trap, could be nothing, could be bad, could get him arrested or killed, but he didn't care. Dick needed him.

“I'll be there soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> The explanation for why Dick called and needed Clint will be in the next part. I just wanted this one to be separate from that part because it will get long.


End file.
